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many teachers groan when anyone talks about differentiated instruction because it just makes them feel inadequate

The conversation must evolve from “Differentiating Instruction” to “Differentiating Learning

Thus, the old pre-reqs are out: GPAs, transcripts, SATS.  In fact, Google is beginning to disregard academic educations altogether: they're just not a good predictor of success at the company. Says Bock, "After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different. You’re also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently." According to the Times, Google is putting its money where its mouth is: they've actually increased their hires with no college education—14% of some of its teams have never been to school, according to Bock. Instead, the emphasis is on hiring candidates who are leaders, and work well in teams. The only way to discover this, says Bock, is through "structured" behavior interviews that assess how a person makes decisions. The winning interviewees will be able to demonstrate that they are "consistent and fair in how [they] think about making decisions and that there’s an element of predictability." This is key to building trust among team members once hired, he explains. "If a leader is consistent, people on their teams experience tremendous freedom, because then they know that within certain parameters, they can do whatever they want. If your manager is all over the place, you’re never going to know what you can do, and you’re going to experience it as very restrictive."

The first is that practice is not the same as deliberate practice

Simply putting in 10,000 hours of practice in an activity does not guarantee expertise

Instead of forging superficial connections, starting where your students are is about showing kids how to learn in ways that work best for them. It's about creating spaces in the classroom where our students can feel comfortable being who they are rather than conforming to who we think they should be. It's about helping kids feel safe enough to bring with them their skills, strengths, culture, and background knowledge—and showing them how to use these to acquire the curriculum.

Hugh McGuire, the founder of LibriVox.org, the terrific crowd-sourced audiobooks service.  We'll talk Web 2.0, books, learning, and more in the context of thinking about education.

"I do bookish R and D on the web. I build webby things, and find out if people like them. I also write and speak often enough about media, publishing, the web, technology, mass collaboration, online community-building, open culture, copyright, in places like Huffington Post, Forbes.com, and O’Reilly Radar. I’m also editing an O’Reilly book about the future of publishing."